Introduction : Building on "signifying" and the blues -- Self-veiling : James Weldon Johnson, Charles Chesnutt, and Nella Larsen -- Solitude : the beginnings of self-realization in Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison -- Kinship : the power of association in Michael Harper and Eldridge Cleaver -- Intimacy : the interpenetration of the one and the all in Robert Hayden and Alice Walker -- Tragic and ironic denials of intimacy : Jean Toomer, James Baldwin, and Ishmael Reed -- After intimacy : the search for new meaning in recent black fiction